Looking Ahead to Look Behind
by Moonraker One
Summary: Prior to the Batman Beyond project, Lex had his plan to create an offspring of Superman. If he couldn't get the alien on his side, then his child would be the next best thing. The problem is, he didn't take into account her determination.
1. Chapter 1

Looking Ahead to Look Behind  
By Moonraker One

A/N: There are characters from both the comics and the Justice League animated series. Consider this taking place in the animated series with a few of the comic characters thrown in.

Superman didn't like having his morning interrupted.

Clark Kent would get up, clean himself up, put on his suit and his glasses, and go to work. Whenever he needed to be called into battle, he would take his leave and go take care of the bad guys. However, he always at least made it to work before he had to go save someone. This time, he'd found his routine interrupted. Furthermore, it hadn't even been an ordinary interruption. Robberies, thefts, your occasional Luthor project gets out of control, those were things he could handle easily.

Now he found himself on the receiving end of a beat down. It really didn't surprise him, however, seeing as he found himself staring down Superboy Prime. Not only that, it was a Monday.

"J'onn!" Superman shouted, seeing the Martian Manhunter coming in for assistance. "Any time the reinforcements want to arrive!" He saw his young foe turn away for a moment to see who he was talking to. Remembering Batman's advice, he took the initiative and delivered a powerful blow. Windows shattered for blocks around as he sent his enemy sailing out of Metropolis.

"I'm sorry, Superman," the green Martian called back. "We're still waiting on Doctor Fate to respond. He's our best shot at taking down the other universe Superboy." He adapted his musculature to be denser so that he could more adequately assist his fellow Justice Leaguer.

Upon drawing the fight out of a crowded city, Superman used his hearing to locate his foe. The villain in question careened in at an unheard of speed and clocked Superman hard enough to knock his jaw out of place. "Don't you understand? I'm immune to magic!" He punched his older main universe counterpart in the stomach. "I have enough strength to move planets out of their orbit! Why don't you give up?"

"Because here on this Earth," he replied, delivering an axe-handle smash to Superboy Prime and kneeing him in the stomach, "Superman doesn't do that." He's much stronger than me, Superman thought, trying to avoid blows that had such force behind them that they caused air pressure explosions behind him even after he dodged. As he landed a right hook on the boy's face, he found a heat vision burst burn a hole clean through his right arm. His Kryptonian regeneration kicked in, but the pain caused him to reel and it gave an opening. Superboy Prime kicked him straight in the side of the head, almost throwing him completely off balance. He grabbed Superman by the leg and whirl tossed him into the heart of Metropolis.

"Superman's losing pretty badly! We need more firepower!" Wonder Woman signaled with her earpiece, right before flying up and attempting to pound on the virtually omnipotent Superboy Prime. He managed to parry her blows with incredible ease and send her on her way with a straight jab to the sternum. A blast from Hawkgirl's mace startled him a moment, but he effectively ignored her and flew towards his main target.

Superman, his blood drying on his uniform while his regeneration healed him, dislodged himself from one of the interior walls of the LexCorp building. Its inhabitant stood up from underneath his desk and looked at the ruined section of the wall. "Superman! What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. He was simply in his office, taking care of business, when the Boy Scout came flying in and blasted clear through two whole floors. Honestly, he figured, I can't get a moment of peace.

"Lex! Get out of here before you get killed!" Superman beckoned. He had but an instant to say it, though, as his foe approached at ever faster velocities. Green Lantern ensnared Superboy Prime in a clamp formed out of energy, but found himself being dragged instead of slowing the boy down. Even though Superman despised Luthor, he flew out of the building to draw fire away from him. It didn't work that well, however, as he barely made it out before he got a swift punch in the face. The villain effortlessly freed himself from Green Lantern's grasp as he entered the office building and began driving his foe through walls and ceilings.

Superboy Prime was in a mail room hallway as he lifted Superman by the neck and punched him in the face and chest repeatedly. He drove his foe into his knee and tossed him aside upon hearing a woman scream. "You remind me of my old girlfriend," he uttered, sneering. "That pisses me off. Reminding me of what was TAKEN from me!" He flew towards her and she closed her eyes, waiting for her life to end abruptly.

Instead, a metallic fist struck him in the head with such force as to shatter most of the building's windows. The force of the impact launched Superboy Prime clear out of Metropolis. "That was just a momentary distraction. We should come up with a strategy of taking him down." Superman wiped blood from his eyes and looked up at the familiar voice. It was Professor Ivo's android creation.

"Amazo!" Superman yelled, standing up. "That means,"

"Yes, I'm here," Doctor Fate said, closing a portal behind him.

He frowned. "But Fate," he countered, "he's immune to magic."

He didn't have time to continue his speaking, as Superboy Prime flew in and took the android out of the building. The machine did a startlingly effective job of countering and parrying attacks. However, it dismayed him as he received a vicious blow. "I…I can't copy…your powers?"

Superboy Prime nearly took his foe's arm off with a left hook. "I'm too powerful for you," he taunted.

Amazo punched him as hard as he could, but all it did was launch him back towards the LexCorp building. There were no visible signs of wounds of any kind. He flew back in and exchanged a telepathic quote with Fate. "I can't copy his powers, Doctor. And he is too strong even for me."

Doctor Fate was about to reply that he had a strategy, but before he had a chance, the costumed villain emerged from underneath the floor and stopped behind the machine. The android had time to face his attacker…right before Superboy Prime put his fist straight through the machine's head. Amazo collapsed to the floor in a sparking heap.

Angry, Superman responded with an impressive combo. He uppercut his foe viciously, then grabbed his shoulders and drove him downward into a rising knee, and finished with a headbutt. Superboy Prime's blood dripped from his lips for the first time in the entire battle. He angrily retaliated. He drew his fist back for a finishing blow. Superman gasped as he saw his foe's muscles tense. This strike had enough power to bring the entire LexCorp building, if not the entire city, from how much power was behind it. Most of the Justice League couldn't put a dent in him. The android was down. Doctor Fate had a plan, and Superman counted on it. Otherwise, this kid would punch a hole straight through him.

With a wave of his hand, a yellow sunlight force field surrounded Superman and all the electric lights in the building were changed to shine red sunlight. The hero of Metropolis charged forward and delivered a powerful blow; his enemy's attacks were greatly diminished in power. "Fate!" Superman shouted, repeatedly striking his foe in the head. "Red sunlight doesn't drain him fast enough! We need to weaken him more!"

"You're not going to beat me with these red lights, Superman!" Superboy Prime taunted, kicking at his foe's stomach. Superman didn't recoil as much as he had before, as the kick had been drained of a large portion of its previous power.

Fate knew what Superman had in mind. He concentrated, analyzing the extradimensional threat on a cellular level, then a molecular level, then finally, on a subatomic level. Magically scanning the boy on the smallest levels possible, he found the vibrational frequency that all objects from the Prime universe shared in common; the key identifier that Superboy Prime was in fact, not from the main Earth universe. He looked throughout the LexCorp building they were in, and found Lex's safe filled with Kryptonite. He memorized the frequency of the radiation of the lethal ordinance, then recalled the vibrational frequency of the Prime universe.

Superman whirled around, decking the boy in the face and getting a dab of blood on the walls. Superboy Prime saw his blood on the floor and the walls. This wasn't supposed to happen, he thought. No one can harm me. I am beyond Superman in everything! He shouldn't be capable of harming me.

"Now!" Superman shouted.

Fate raised his hand and a green burst of energy shot forth and struck Superboy Prime right in the chest. He screeched in pain, unlike anything he'd ever felt. Superman launched himself forward, plowing a jab into the villain's gut, causing him to spit up more blood on the ground, and Fate, with his other hand, opened a portal to the Phantom Zone. Superman threw his foe forward through the portal and Doctor Fate sealed it tight. Superman sighed, then relaxed for a moment against the wall.

"After we beat Superboy Prime the first time, we put him in the Phantom Zone," he recalled. "I thought that even the most physically powerful being in the universe couldn't escape the Phantom Zone."

"He didn't," Fate answered. "Someone with magic let him out. If I find out, I'll let you know. Right now, I have to see if I can restore the Android. Superboy Prime did a number on him." He vanished into thin air. The Justice League gathered their wounded, and the main heavy hitters returned to the Watchtower to heal. Meanwhile, they sent in various cleanup and worker crews to fix damage and remove rubble from the area. It would be quite a while. LexCorp had its own repair crew and had no desire to get any assistance from the Justice League.

Lex sat in his office, drinking from his mini refrigerator inside one of his dressers. He had a glass of wine halfway down when his door opened and a suited female figure walked in. She approached the desk. "I delivered on my side of the bargain, Lex," the woman said, pushing her brown hair away from her face. She briefly dropped the illusion, revealing her true form for but a moment.

"I think you'll find your bank account full, Morgan Le Fay," he replied. "It's just like we agreed. You get eight million and the artifact," he produced an ancient lead box, "and I get samples of blood." He watched as she set two vials of red blood on his desk, and smiled.

"Am I finished yet? And what do you need Superman's blood for?" She picked up the box and held it tightly. If it hadn't been first discovered by Lex Luthor, she wouldn't have had to go to such lengths to work for him. "I broke Superboy Prime out of the Phantom Zone, and then they fought in the city. Why such trouble?"

Lex drummed his fingers together. "Because Superman disposed of all the samples I had of his DNA when we last fought. And I needed someone strong enough to break through that skin of steel he has. I like the fact that they brought the fight right to my home turf; now that was a bonus."

She waved as she walked out. "Whatever, Lex. I just want my money." She stopped at the door. "But, what're you going to do with Superman's DNA? Make another Superboy like that kid that joined the Teen Titans?"

"No. Something bigger than that," he admitted. "But your work here is done, Le Fay." He circled around and held up the two vials. "The spoils of war," he whispered to himself. He pressed a button on his intercom. "I've got two vials of blood ready for project Superman 2. Are the nanites ready?"

A voice quickly responded. "We've got the nanites that were stolen from Cadmus. All we have to do is reshape the DNA so it can bind successfully with a human's and cause fertilization, and then we're ready."

"So," Lex replied, "these nanites will rewrite a test subject's reproductive tissue to produce that of our sample?"

"In common terms," the scientist shot back, "whoever we choose, his testicles will produce Superman's sperm. It is sperm that will be able to bond to human DNA, producing a human/Kryptonian hybrid."

Lex could imagine his plan taking shape. Every piece had been laid in place. All he had to do now was to make sure his chess pieces played their part. He had on his desk a file folder of the physical and psychological profiles of a young Smallville couple. The husband owned thirty acres outside the main city. He had an appointment to get a flu shot from the LexCorp medical department. Little did he know he would be receiving more than that, and that Lex had a plan to build a super hero, grow them from the ground up, and then corrupt them in the height of their youth. If he couldn't get Superman on his side, he'd do the next best thing.

The husband, Martin Ganworth, went in to get a flu shot, about fourteen days later, and received the injection, just as Lex had planned. Just under a year after that, his wife, Olivia, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with dark hair. Neither one of them was any the wiser to the plan. They went home to Smallville with their daughter, Annabeth, to start their new life. To them, absolutely nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They simply ignored her jet black hair while both of them were redheads, they wrote the conspicuous absence of a birthmark similar to her father off as good genes, and the fact that her eyes were blue while theirs were brown and green, they believed to be a family trait from a past generation. No reason to doubt her genetics popped up until she was ten years old.

It occurred on a Monday.

The young girl leapt off the bus with vigor. Her mother and father waited at the start of the driveway. "Hey, kiddo," the father yelled, "how was school?" He had errands to run, but at least he would see his little girl safely return home before he did. His wife smiled and hugged the girl as she set down her pack and jumped into her mother's arms.

"It was really boring," she replied. "Other than history where they talked about the Civil War, it almost put me to sleep." She was glad to be home. After surviving another school day, she wanted nothing more than to relax. The mother looked over at her husband, ready to jump in his truck and head to main town Smallville and pick up some supplies. She looked at her father with a request on her mind. "I was wondering, since we didn't get to yesterday, can we play baseball?"

"Dear, do you think you've got a minute to spare?" She looked to the baseball bat that sat on the porch. "It won't be light anymore by the time you get back, so why don't you let her hit a few times?" She grabbed her daughter's backpack and set it on the porch.

"Really?" Annabeth cooed. "Can we, dad?" She jumped up and down, briefly, until her father stepped out of the vehicle, and with a smile on his face, agreed.

"I was kinda busy yesterday, but I think I've got time before the store closes," he admitted. "Tomorrow, you get off of school, I'll finish my chores early, and we can get in a better game." He picked up the baseball and handed her the bat. Taking a step backward-so he didn't position the truck behind her-he threw the ball underhandedly, with a moderate amount of force. She gripped the bat and swung; the ball passed underneath without striking it. The mother picked it up and passed it back to her husband.

"Throw it a bit higher, dad!" Annabeth cried. True to her word, he aimed slightly higher and flung the ball. This time, when the girl swung, she hit it. In fact, she slammed the bat against the ball with far greater force than intended. It was gone. She'd knocked it clear out of the state of Kansas.

The parents stood and stared at the afternoon sky in shock as they saw the small round object vanish into the horizon. "How the…what…I don't…" the mother hesitatingly gasped. She looked at her daughter with incredulity. "Annabeth, how…did you do…that?" Her husband and her shared a look that told of their confusion. She's…she's got powers, the mother thought. Like those horrible Kryptonite mutants that used to show up so often in the past. Her husband looked at the baseball bat and saw the handprints dug into the aluminum.

"Kiddo, did…you ever come into contact with a glowing green rock?" he asked.

Annabeth looked left and right, mystified. "No, I've never seen any glowy green rocks." She had a bigger concern. "We're not going to have to move, are we?"

The mother knelt down and hugged her daughter. "Oh, no, honey, we live here. It doesn't matter if you are special. We're not going to uproot you just because you've got an ability." Her words were comforting to her daughter, but her own thoughts deeply concerned her. She felt like her world had been turned off and a new one turned on. Her daughter, possibly a krypto-mutant, severely disturbed her. She still loved her daughter and would support her as best as possible, but the risk couldn't be greater. Now her family would have to proceed with extreme caution.

Unbeknownst to the Ganworth's, a pair of eyes watched them. Far away in a tower in Metropolis, a man sat, his view fixed to a monitor that had a blinking light on it. The remote cameras, nanoscopic in size, had captured what was looped on the monitor. Lex watched as a little girl knocked a baseball into another state. "Pretty soon," he whispered to himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Looking Ahead to Look Behind  
By Moonraker One

Annabeth Ganworth, in one swing of a baseball bat, destroyed any need of her parents to ever watch professional baseball again. They took the news of her having superpowers rather well. It posed new problems and a lot of phone calls home from school officials, but they decided she was their daughter and they would support her no matter what. If ever a problem arose, they would deal with it when they came to it. What they didn't know was that their daughter did not have Martin Ganworth's DNA in her, but then again, they managed to ignore that issue. They provided their daughter with books on biofeedback and meditation techniques, so that she would be able to put her incredible strength and powers under her control, and bought sturdier house supplies, all in the name of support.

And, to their knowledge, it worked; by the time she was a year older, just past eleven, she had gone eight months without accidentally breaking something or blasting through a wall by losing control of super speed. She could put out a fire in the barn with her super breath, or tone it down enough to cool hot coffee just enough to be drinkable. She could melt iron to re-forge rusty tools, or calm her heat vision enough to brand a wood crate. Also, she could hear concerts in Kansas City, or focus in specifically on what her parents were saying, but she kept that one to herself. It took tremendous amounts of practice. Her friends sometimes wondered why she could only hang out for a few hours at a time on certain days, but it paid off. After awhile they stopped worrying. She had shown very mature responsibility in using her powers. She never lashed out against someone in anger, though God knows she wanted to on several occasions. If Superman himself had somehow been there to watch her progress, he'd be flabbergasted; what took him years of practice she got down in several months.

One particular Saturday afternoon, Martin's pickup truck was headed towards a family friend's house. The trio had a series of events in mind. They would catch up on friendly terms and have a day of recreation in Metropolis. Annabeth's parents had a movie in mind. Even though the girl took more after her mother than her father, she still had her old man's love for action films. After all the talking was behind them, they would spend quality time at the theater.

"Try to keep your powers in check, Annabeth," the mother warned. "Remember that Metropolis is a major city; you don't want to attract too much attention." She had concerns about how effective the training they put her through would be. In the safety of Smallville, where people were more spread out, it was easy. In a huge sprawling city, though, there were watchful eyes at every turn. She hadn't prepared for this.

"I got it," the girl replied. She fought off her mother's worrisome habits. She believed in herself. "Don't worry about me."

They weren't aware of it, but a Metropolis businessman kept his watchful eye on everything they were doing. For the previous several months, since discovering that Annabeth had, in fact, unlocked her powers, Lex Luthor had made absolutely sure to observe everything about her abilities. With the release of a movie about the origin of a fictional superhero, and the family's planned trip to Metropolis, he saw the perfect opportunity to enact his plan. Sitting across from his desk was a familiar face. The fair-haired gentleman sat down and sneered as he inspected a suitcase full of money.

"You'll be richly rewarded for your part in this, Metallo," Lex told him. "All you have to do is to follow the plan I've outlined. After the film, another of my operatives will be in place to pretend to tow the Ganworth's truck. At which point, he'll release this into the air," Lex produced a vial of a greenish liquid, "which will cause the family to hallucinate into thinking that they're being attacked. It also has aggression chemicals in it."

John Corben put it into his pocket. "What's the stuff made out of?"

Lex smiled. "It's a specific hallucinogen that is enhanced with liquid kryptonite. Not much," he explained, "just enough to be effective against human and non-human alike. It's also been tailored to react certain ways with certain individuals. If it does what I think it'll do, when Superman comes to save them, it'll make him act overly violently."

Corben raised an eyebrow. "How do you know Superman is going to save them?"

Lex chuckled and shook his head. "If someone starts a fight in Metropolis and starts screaming, Superman shows up. I'll be highly amazed if he doesn't." Lex leaned in, and finished his instructions. "And when he does, he'll be affected by the stuff, and that's where you come in. You make sure that, if the Boy Scout doesn't kill the girl's parents, you do, and pretend to be a superhero while you do it."

John Corben stood up. "This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to get one little girl," he admitted.

"That's where you're wrong," Lex replied. "I'm not trying to 'get' her; I'm trying to corrupt her. If she thinks a superhero killed her parents, what's her natural response going to be, with her mind at her level of development?"

Corben grinned. "That's pretty devious, even for you, Lex," he revealed. "I like it."

In the subdivision just outside the main city of Metropolis, a pickup truck pulled into the driveway of a cookie cutter brick house. Its manicured lawn and newly-shingled roof told of success in the financial area. The Ganworths stepped out of the vehicle and warmly greeted their long time friends with smiles and hugs. Both sides heard and gave the typical small talk that flows between old friends. The couple welcomed the family into their house. After a few brief moments, they sat down to eat.

"So," Martin Ganworth asked. "When did you get the new addition to your house?" He had noticed they remodeled since the last time he was over.

"Oh, about a month ago, when I got a bonus check from work," his friend replied. "Really came in handy, because I needed to fix the crack in the piping, and managed to get a new section of the exterior along with it!"

"How's your daughter coming along?" his wife asked Olivia Ganworth. Olivia and her husband both tensed up a brief moment, hoping that the question hadn't been aimed at what they worried it was. Fortunately, the woman clarified, "in school; how's she adjusting to the new grade level?"

Martin let out a breath. "Ah, she's doing fine. It's not hard once she gets used to it."

They smiled. "It's good to hear," the wife replied.

Miles away, at the Daily Planet building, a fairly calm Clark Kent was finishing up his daily shift. There had been no major problems that day, and it allowed him to catch up on a deal of stories that he'd been working on. He powered down his computer and put his notebook in his briefcase. Calmly, he pushed the thoughts of news events out of his mind and thought about a relaxing evening with Lois and possibly, a night on the town. He didn't usually have the opportunity to take a break, due to major events, but this working day ended on a particularly good note. With a smile, he addressed the few coworkers that remained, and exited the building.

Lois, having finished her story of the day, followed her husband out the building and signaled for a cab. She knew that Superman had very little to do, as the Justice League took care of the hard cases recently, so she had more than a few evenings to spend with Clark. Most of the major villains that plagued the man of steel either sat in jail or the Phantom Zone, and ordinary crime could wait a bit; their marriage had drifted a bit, and they both wanted to get closer. Even though he wasn't terribly fond of the plays that she wanted to take him to, Superman dealt with it and got in the cab. He leaned over and hugged his wife, kissing her on the cheek. This evening, he wanted her to feel special.

The Ganworth's and their friends had finished their meal and were exiting into the movie theatre. Annbeth cheered for joy as she saw the poster on the wall for the film they would watch. She liked action films. This day, they believed, couldn't possibly get any better. Martin, being nice, paid for everyone's ticket. They didn't get away from the farm very often, much less for an evening in Metropolis; he could splurge this time. With popcorn and soda in hand, the group of five handed their tickets over and walked down to the third theater on the right, and sat down to watch a CGI war in outer space. Annabeth had to focus; she had to dampen her super hearing so crosstalk from other movies wouldn't distract her.

John Corben, the villain known as Metallo, got into position. He hid behind a pillar of the parking facility, and radioed to the LexCorp official in a falsely painted tow truck. The man started the vehicle and drove it into the parking garage where he presented false identification to Metropolis Police. They waved him on and he sat in a specific spot and listened to his music collection while his targets were watching a film. Corben calmly waited, taking a brief moment to think about the substance in his possession. Lex had gone to a lot of trouble to coordinate quite a bit of false data and a lot of hired help, and all for a girl who had half of Superman's DNA. Granted, a girl who had Superman's powers would be quite handy to have against the Justice League, but he wondered exactly how worth it the money was. Hastily, though, he waved the concerns aside. It was money, he figured; either way, a million large could go a long way, even now.

While all this was going down, Lois and Clark, free of the worries of the job, sat down in a moderately crowded amphitheatre to watch a Broadway production that the intrepid reporter had kept her eye on since reading about it in the paper months ago. Clark tugged at his glasses and pushed down his super hearing. Being a day off, he wanted to try and keep his wife at the front of his mind. Still, if someone truly needed Superman, they'd get Superman's help. Superheroes, he knew, were always on call. He settled in for the play to last approximately two hours.

After ninety minutes of sci-fi action, the Smallville couple exited the theatre, having enjoyed the best night out in quite a while. Their friends got in their car and left, after saying their goodbyes and the Ganworth's walked farther down the parking lot towards the familiar pickup truck. Martin, however, took exception to the fact that a tow operator was hooking the vehicle up to his truck. "Hey!" he yelled. "We paid for the hour and a half we parked there!"

The tow operator feigned confusion. "Oh, really? If you've got your parking voucher, we can straighten up this little mess." He looked up from his notepad to see if Metallo was walking towards the group. He was. "Just let me take a look at your voucher and we'll finish this up."

At that moment, Metallo approached. The Ganworth's turned to see who stood behind them, and before they could get a good look at who he was, they got a face full of a green mist that enveloped the local vicinity. For about twenty feet around them, the hallucinogen, laced with Kryptonite, would linger in the air. The tow operator covered his nose with a gas mask and quickly fled for the LexCorp limo parked just out of the sight of everyone exiting the theatre. Sure to the word of Lex, both Martin and Olivia began to see things that weren't there.

Annabeth rubbed her eyes and shook her head. When she looked up, she saw what looked like Superman-she couldn't tell easily through the blurriness of her vision-and her father was trying to physically attack him. Before she could rush in to help, a quick shove by Metallo almost injured the poor man when he slammed against the concrete wall of the parking facility. "No!" she screamed. "Somebody!" Her mother, under the influence of the chemical, attempted to wrap her arms around Metallo's neck in a chokehold, but he shoved her aside and knocked her out.

Miles away, Superman immediately snapped to attention. He clearly heard someone scream for help. "I'm sorry, Lois," he told her, "but I've got to go." He then excused himself from the auditorium and super-sped out into Metropolis, taking to the air and changing out of his casual clothes. Following the sound from its source, he got there in only twenty seconds. He gasped; it was Metallo, engaged in combat against a couple and their daughter. The husband repeatedly struck back, to no avail. Kal-El clenched his fists and swooped down, unaware of the airborne chemical.

He found out about it quickly. Blasting Corben away from the husband, his lungs quickly caught a whiff of the Kryptonite-laced hallucinogen. It was just thin enough that he didn't lose his powers, but potent still to effect his mind. He looked at Martin Ganworth and saw instead a malformed monster of various hideous types of flesh. His first instinct was to try and destroy it. He drew back his fist for a powerful punch.

Annabeth's jaw almost dropped. As time seemed to slow to a stop around her, she clenched her teeth in anger. Possibly the most powerful man in the world had her father in a chokehold. The previously thick blurriness around her eyes cleared almost immediately. She took footsteps in superspeed, the air bending around her to leave an outline behind. As the killing blow zoomed in on her father, she pressed her power as far as she could. Closing her eyes, she managed to feel her shoulder collide with his abdomen right as his punch would've decapitated Martin. With her feet leaving the ground at super-speed as she leapt into his side to tackle him, she accidentally tackled him several city blocks.

As they came to a stop, being outside the proximity of the hallucinogen seemed to wear the effects off. He looked at the girl with incredulity. It wasn't every day that he encountered someone who looked human who could knock him for a loop. "How did you…" he wondered out loud, but quickly remembered Metallo. "It'll have to wait!" He flew off at a tremendous velocity. He righted himself so that he would go fast enough to run into Corben and move him away from the couple without being affected by the chemical in the air.

The super-powered girl took off after Superman a second after he left. She didn't know what was going on, as she couldn't trust what she saw, but the last thing she wanted was to leave her father behind when he'd already been attacked once. She zoomed past the buildings with incredible speed, and when she arrived at the parking garage, she saw Superman having tied up Metallo with a steel pole. "Superman!" she cried. "What happened?"

He shook his head. "He was using some chemical laced with Kryptonite," he explained. "I know that feeling all too well." His confused look returned. "What I want to know, little girl, is how you got the powers you did." Using his microscopic vision, he clearly could tell that her DNA was half human and half Kryptonian, and that only meant a small list of things. He supported her parents as they awoke from the stupor they were in.

Olivia looked over. "S…Superman!" she stated, in shock. "What was all this? First there's a green mist, and then,"

Martin interrupted her. "We were attacked and I don't remember much of what happened."

"You two were assaulted by Metallo," Superman explained. "I took care of him. And I'm guessing Lex Luthor had something to do with that green mist." He quickly gave them a scan. "You've got a few minor injuries that should be looked at. Plus, there are other issues to worry about." He got on his communicator. "J'onn? Can you teleport some civilians and me up to the Watchtower?"

As they appeared, Batman and the Martian Manhunter approached. "You brought civilians to the Watchtower, Superman?...! Why would you do that?"

"Because they were attacked by Metallo, and I'm guessing the fact that the little girl has Kryptonian powers is part of it!"

They were sat down in a waiting area and interviewed before the full original Justice League. The mother shook her head in amazement. "We knew our daughter had powers, but we never really believed that she would be part Kryptonian!" She looked at her husband. "After all, I never met Superman before in my life!"

Green Lantern scanned the father. "The ring tells me that for some reason, his genetic reproductive material has been changed to someone else's." He thought about it. "That leaves only two major options."

"Cadmus," Batman shot back.

"Luthor," Superman instantly realized.

Martin Ganworth rubbed his aching back. This couldn't be happening, he thought. "So, even though I'm her father, Superman is her genetic biological father?"

As they were about to agree, John Stewart received a surprising message from his ring. "Actually, that's not the case at all."

The room fell silent as they looked at him. "Who could it possibly be otherwise?" Flash asked. "I mean, who else's DNA could mister Ganworth have gotten?"

"It's almost as if it was the DNA of a Kryptonian race from another universe," Green Lantern corrected.

Superman ruminated on it for a moment. "When have I fought a Kryptonian from another…" It hit him. A moment later, it hit everyone of the Justice League.

"A little over ten years ago," Martian Manhunter realized.

Batman, normally in control of his emotions, covered his mouth in shock of what the truth had to be.

"Superboy Prime."


End file.
